Weather problems: In case of inclement weather,
we will follow the weather policy of the host, Mulberry Technologies. In the event
that a class day begins late, we will run late; in the event that a
class day is canceled, we will do our best to re-schedule the class as
soon as possible.

Accessibility: Mulberry's facilities are on the
second floor; access is by stairway; there is neither a ramp nor
an elevator. For more information, please contact Black Mesa
Technologies at 505/747-4224.

Introduction to XFormsIntroduction to XForms for XML users&city-state;&course-dates;&date.last.touched;

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Note: no seats are currently available in this course.
Let us know if you're interested in a future repeat of the course.

This two-day hands-on course introduces XForms as a technology for
building special-purpose XML editors with limited functionality and
correspondingly simple user interfaces.

XForms is built on the model / view / controller idiom, in which
the ‘model’ is a set of XML documents, the ‘view’ is specified using
XHTML and XForms controls (or widgets), and
the ‘controller’ takes the form of
declarative links between controls in the view
and elements or attributes in the
XML documents. With XForms, projects can develop vocabulary- and
task-specific editors which require less training and provide better
task-specific support than full XML editors; it is thus easier to
allow domain experts to examine and modify XML encoding, and routine
tasks can be performed more quickly and reliably.

Topics and syllabus

The course is divided into eight sessions, four to a day:

Introduction

High-level overview of XForms, background, goals
and purpose of the XForms spec; Hello, world example

Dealing with (flat) heterogeneous sequences;
dealing with variable-depth sequences.
Extensions to XForms: tree editors, general mixed-content editors.
Doing without the extensions:
targeted editing in mixed content,
offloading work to XSLT.

What next? Individual work and/or Q/A

Where do you go from here?
Individual work or questions and answers;
wrapup.

During the class, students will develop a small XForms application
with a multi-part interface, multiple widget types, and the ability to
add, modify, and delete records in a set. Students will be encouraged
to take their class exercise files with them so that they can
continue to work with them after the class.

Prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable editing XML documents
and have some knowledge of HTML markup.
Familiarity with XPath and XSLT is helpful but not required.
Programming experience is not required.

Students may bring their own laptops or may use a
classroom machine.

The machine must support wifi networking and have
a browser with support for Javascript and XSLT (any
reasonably current version of most major browsers will
work) as well as software the student can comfortably
use for editing XML documents.

Logistics

When and where

This course will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
&course-dow;, &course-dates;, at
&course-address;
Thanks to &hostorg; for hosting the course.

&local-info;

Who

The course is organized by Black Mesa Technologies LLC and
will be taught by
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen.

Michael Sperberg-McQueen
is the founder of Black Mesa Technologies.
He has served as co-editor of the XML 1.0 specification, the
Text Encoding Initiative's

Guidelines for Text Encoding and Interchange,
and the XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1 specification;
in 2003 he was awarded the XML Cup for contributions to the
development and spread of XML.

&hostorg-inc; is providing space (for which thanks),
but has no other involvement with the course.

Breaks and meals

Breaks: Coffee and simple pastries will be provided.

Lunch: For lunch, you are on your own.
A list of nearby eateries will be provided; you are also welcome
to bring your own lunch.

Price

&course-price; per student.

Payment can be made by check, credit card, Paypal payment, or government training/purchase
order on or before the first day
of class.

Early-bird discount: For payments received before &earlybird-deadline;,
a ten percent discount is offered (&earlybird-price; instead of &course-price; for the course).

Registration / Info

Space in the course is limited.

To reserve a space, to register, or to ask for
more information, please send email to
info@blackmesatech.com or call us at
505/747-4224.

Announcements of future courses

To receive announcements of future Black Mesa Technologies
courses on XForms and other topics, you can subscribe to
blackmesatech-announce-l.